Last week's The Economistleader and cover story, "Picking winners, saving losers", painted an insidious picture of governments' increasing intervention in market economies, arguing that the hideous Leviathan of the state was gobbling up one sector after another and warning that "picking industrial winners nearly always fails." Now, put aside the fact that the government was forced into some sectors--such as automobiles and financial services--only after mammoth market failures and pleas for rescues from capitalism's chieftains. The more important fact is that the article feeds a Socialism-is-coming hysteria and ignores how picking winners--within limits--has worked in the past for the United States (and Japan, South Korea, etc.) and is needed more than ever to bolster our long-term competitiveness.
Of course, the debate about the appropriate role between the state and the private sector in market economies has raged for centuries. The debate is marred in part by vague terminology, and The Economist perpetuates this problem by throwing around a slew of terms--"picking winners", "industrial policy", "innovation policy"--without adequately distinguishing between them but while uniformly indicting them as inappropriate manifestations of government economic intervention.
It would be more constructive to envision a continuum of government-market engagement, increasing from left to right in four steps from a "laissez faire, leave it to the market" approach to "supporting factor conditions for innovation (such as education)" (which The Economist endorses, as, certainly, does ITIF) to going further by "supporting key technologies/industries" to at the most extreme "picking specific national champion companies", that is, "picking winners." And while it is generally inadvisable for governments to intervene in markets to support specific national champion companies, ITIF believes there is an appropriate role for government in placing strategic bets to support potentially breakthrough nascent technologies and industries.
Instead of raising the price of fossil fuels, Gates argues that the time has come to shift our attention to raising the revenues necessary to fuel innovation and make clean energy cheap.
In a new interview with Technology Review, Bill Gates nails the global energy and climate challenge and discusses the need for dramatic increases in energy innovation funding to make clean energy cheap.
In a climate discourse dominated by emissions targets and carbon caps, Gates has provided a refreshing and clear-eyed look at the first-order importance of direct public investment to develop clean, affordable technologies to replace fossil fuels on a global scale.
In this new interview, Gates discusses why dismissing the difficulty of the challenge is counter-productive, and argues that carbon pricing can never drive the dramatic innovation required to transform the global energy system. Instead of raising the price of fossil fuels, Gates argues that the time has come to shift our attention to raising the revenues necessary to fuel innovation and make clean energy cheap.
Below the fold, you can find excerpts from Gates' interview, which can be read in full here.
For more, the NYTimesAndy Revkin and TIME magazine's Bryan Walsh each spotlight the interview here and here, respectively.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has funded breakthrough innovation and new growth industries that are driving down the cost of clean energy and building the foundation for competitive 21st century U.S. industries, according to a new White House reportreleased today on the impacts of the U.S. stimulus bill.
Yet while the White House report highlights the considerable clean energy momentum established by the Recovery Act, it also inadvertently raises the specter of an impending clean tech funding cliff which risks sending U.S. clean energy industries into deep freeze as stimulus funds begin to expire over the coming months.
There's been some change over at WhiteHouse.gov's energy and environment page, but probably not the kind we had in mind when we heard President Obama's oft-repeated campaign slogan, "Change You Can Believe In."
A number of (as yet unfulfilled) energy and environmental policy pledges have been removed from the WhiteHouse.gov page in recent weeks.
Chief among them: President Obama's pledge to "invest $150 billion over ten years in energy research and development to transition to a clean energy economy," once a central plank in Obama's energy and environment platform, and a feature of his first national budget proposal (in FY2009).
"What determines success in industrial policy is not the ability to pick winners but the capacity to let the losers go." - Dani Rodrik, as quoted in a Businessweek article evaluating the future of industrial policy and clean energy...
"What determines success in industrial policy is not the ability to pick winners but the capacity to let the losers go."
- Dani Rodrik, as quoted in a Businessweek article evaluating the future of industrial policy and clean energy technology in the United States. Really, a useful lesson to keep in mind when it comes to policy design.
Perhaps there are some signs that a technology-centered approach to decarbonization is gaining momentum. First, from the international negotiations:
U.S. companies are lobbying at UN climate talks in Bonn for incentives to spur technologies that could slow the pace of carbon emissions, abandoning a push to encourage a cap on gas emissions, a business lobby group said.
The U.S. Council for International Business, whose members include General Electric Co. and Coca-Cola Co., said rules to cap CO2 emissions are unlikely soon, Norine Kennedy, vice president of energy and environmental affairs, said in an interview today. Instead, they want incentives encouraging technologies they're promoting.
"The center of the action is technology," she said at the United Nations climate talks. "There's broad agreement that we won't get to the mitigation targets without technology."
Seemingly inspired by the death of cap and trade, over at the Daily Dish Andrew Sullivan has tied together two interesting threads of conversation -- "Waiting on Innovation" and "Why Not?" -- that deal with the issues of energy innovation and energy taxes.
Highlighted in "Why Not?" the Economist's Ryan Avent is on to something when he suggests a $5 per barrel petroleum tax since it could generate about $40 billion in revenue annually. But to suggest, as Avent does, that the tax should rise by $5 each year with the objective of forcing consumers to drive less or purchase more fuel-efficient cars is a strategy that risks falling into the same political trap that ultimately ensnared cap and trade.
Meet the $35 dollar laptop, the result of the Indian government's direct investment in information technology research. If manufactured successfully, the laptop will both revolutionize education in the developing world and serve as a testament to the power of government investment to trigger rapid technological progress.
Last week, the Indian government showcased a prototype of a low-cost laptop that could trigger an education revolution in India and elsewhere in the developing world. If successful, the newly announced computer will serve as a prime example of how direct government investments can reduce the price of technology quickly and effectively.
Funded by the Ministry of Human Resources Development and designed by students from India's top universities, the laptop is slated to enter the market in 2011.
According to a recent IEA report, the U.S. is not alone in facing the possibility of a clean technology R&D funding cliff. The report documents an uptick in global clean energy R&D investment in 2009 as a result of country-level stimulus packages, but the author of the report cautions that investment on this level must be built upon, not allowed to drop off.
According to the [IEA] report, "Global Gaps in Clean Energy RD&D," the recent burst of spending on research as part of various countries' efforts to stimulate their fragile economies has helped provide a substantial boost after decades of diminishing investment on the frontiers of energy inquiry. But the report's author, Thomas Kerr, warned that this was a transitory pulse when sustained growth was needed, particularly given signs that no global price on carbon dioxide emissions was likely any time soon. In essence, the report says, the $24 billion in such spending in 2009 needs to be the new floor for such investments, not a temporary peak.
The report describes how India, despite its poverty, has moved ahead with an initiative for raising money for energy research that the United States -- thanks to a lack of leadership, congressional polarization and fear of anything remotely resembling a tax -- has so far been unable to do: India has created a National Clean Energy Fund for research and innovation financed by a levy of $1.10 (U.S.) per metric ton of mined or imported coal. It's a very modest fee that has created hundreds of millions of dollars to stimulate Indian research and testing of promising technologies.
Click here for more on India's National Clean Energy Fund.
Not "everything should be on the table" for budget cuts to reduce the deficit, argues ITIF President Rob Atkinson in a recent essay. Despite what "neo-classical inspired budget hawks" may insist, Atkinson points out, all spending is not created equal and slashing budget line items for investments that spur innovation could actually serve to put the U.S. further in the red.
He writes:
What's behind this widespread unwillingness to prioritize investment? Budget hawks fear that sparing one item from the chopping block will only validate the demands of interest groups to exempt their pet programs. In addition, many adhere to a neo-classical economics perspective, which holds that government plays a negligible role in economic growth and should be neutral with regard to private sector activity... But government should be anything but neutral. Science and infrastructure funding is more valuable than farm subsidies. Government support for research in computer chips is more valuable than support for potato chips...
In contrast, an innovation economics approach to the budget distinguishes between spending on consumption and spending on investment. For innovation economics advocates, all spending (either on the tax or expenditure side) should be on the table, and all investment (on the tax and expenditure side) should be off the table...
We need to expand investments in education and training, science and research, technology (including, but not limited to clean energy) and physical infrastructure. In economic downturns, successful corporations don't cut key investments because they know that these investments are vital to gaining market share and competitive advantage in the moderate term. Governments should think the same way.
In a recent Guardian op-ed, Breakthrough Senior Fellow Ulrich Beck argues that the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe should be inspiring far more than just a pointless blame game. Instead, he points out, "we need the celebrated innovative power of capital and the utopian enthusiasm of engineers," to revolutionize the way we use energy and make use of the most abundant sources of energy, such as solar power.
Beck writes:
Postwar prosperity in the west laid the foundation for environmental awareness. Now environmental awareness must provide the basis for prosperity in developing countries. These countries will adopt sustainable policies to the extent that the affluent countries invest in their development and adopt a new vision of prosperity and growth. China, India, Brazil and African countries will not agree to any approach that tries to limit their efforts to achieve economic parity - and rightly so.
But does the future lie with a global environmental policy based on carbon trading, which amounts to the global sale of indulgences for CO2 sins? Or will we have the courage to invent and realise a new age of solar energy in which prosperity is not an environmental sin, and when everything from cows to electric toothbrushes is blamed for contributing to CO2 emissions? "It is time to introduce clean forms of energy," Obama has said. If he can ring in an era that is truly Beyond Petroleum, Big Oil's Bastille will be doomed.
The twenty-year effort to create a single global pollution framework to reduce carbon emissions is in a state of collapse. Meanwhile, a new climate policy consensus is emerging, one which prioritizes direct investment in technology innovation to make clean energy cheap. The new framework begins from the understanding that the root cause of the failure of the pollution paradigm was the technology and price gap between fossil fuels and their alternatives. But hard and important questions are being asked of the new investment-and-innovation paradigm. How is it different from just increasing subsidies for clean energy? How can we be sure it will reduce emissions? What role should carbon pricing play? Here Breakthrough Institute answers frequently asked questions of the climate technology paradigm and responds to challenges raised by Alex Evans on the left and Robert Michaels on the right, among others, who have taken aim at Breakthrough's and Bill Gates' proposals, respectively.
Update (Jul 16, 2010): Expanding on a Washington Post op-ed, Vinod Khosla delineates his argument "about the deficiencies of an isolated cap-and-trade or carbon-pricing bill," and joins the climate technology consensus. Khosla writes, "If we want to make a significant difference, we need to get on the path to reducing carbon worldwide by 80 percent now by focusing on what I call "carbon reduction capacity building" -- in other words, we need to develop radical carbon-reduction technologies. A utility cap (or a carbon price) won't build capacity -- it will just increase our utility costs and decrease our manufacturing competitiveness without any increase in our technological competitiveness. On the other hand, although a policy that promotes capacity building will increase research investments in the short term, it will likely decrease overall electricity costs in the medium to long run (through the magic of competition, technology and regulatory certainty), while simultaneously reducing carbon. Disruptive technologies require investment; they don't come from the status quo."
Update (Jul 14, 2010): Other observers have reached similar conclusions about the faltering pollution paradigm. Walter Russell Mead and Clive Crook weigh in on "The Big Green Lie" but can't agree on what it is. Mead argues that it is "that the green movement is a source of coherent or responsible counsel about what to do" while Crook argues that "it's the diminished credibility of the claim that we have a problem in the first place." But both agree that cap and trade and the effort to establish a global carbon pollution regime are dead. Meanwhile, Newsweek's Stefan Theil observes that "the whole concept of radical, top-down global targets is coming under scrutiny" and suggests that the "new climate realism" will "look at other options beyond the current set of targets" and "include a broader mix of policies" including "a shift of subsidies into research and development" and "greater efforts to adapt society to a warmer climate."
Update (Jul 10, 2010): See Andrew Pendleton and Matthew Lockwood of the UK-based IPPR think tank response to Alex Evans' contention that real action on climate will only occur after a major global warming disaster. "There is simply no reason to believe that a climate shock big enough to bring about major changes in thinking will come along before we reach a tipping point (how would we know?)" they write. "Climate change is by its nature long-term and insidious, more like a frog in a warming pot than a sudden Anschluss."
By Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger
The twenty-year effort to create a single global pollution framework to reduce carbon emissions is in a state of collapse. Europe's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) has not reduced emissions and is quickly fading as the central effort to decarbonize European economies. The UN process is becoming a forum for nations to compare and coordinate national policies and measures, not create or enforce a binding global treaty. And it is now clear that, if energy legislation passes the U.S. Senate, it will not create an economy-wide cap-and-trade system, nor will it increase the deployment of clean energy.
Meanwhile, a new climate policy consensus is emerging, one which prioritizes direct investment in technology innovation. This consensus begins with the recognition that the root cause of the failure of the pollution paradigm was the technology and price gap between fossil fuels and their alternatives. No nation -- not even the wealthiest in Europe -- is willing to price carbon enough to cover the difference. Until the technology gap is closed, little will be done to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Arising out of the debates surrounding clean technology and the economic recession, is the nagging question: can the U.S. continue to lead in high tech innovation without domestic manufacturing? Increasingly, it seems, the answer is "NO" -- a response that carries serious implications for clean tech innovation and economic growth in the U.S.
Political confusion surrounding "green" jobs, clean tech, and outsourced manufacturing (largely to Asia) has caused those looking to clean energy as the next U.S. growth sector and those seeking to raise the U.S. out of a growth-numbing recession to lose sight of what has fueled U.S. technological and economic leadership in the past - public support for innovation and large scale high tech manufacturing. Recently, Alexis Madrigal posed the critical question arising from this confusion to the readers of the Atlantic: "Can the US Innovate Without Manufacturing?"
As Breakthrough and numerous high tech leaders argue, the answer is "NO."
In a new IEA report intended to inform and guide climate and energy policy decision makers, the Energy Technology Perspective 2010 (Exec. Summary; full report purchase required) demonstrates that the clean technology revolution will require an additional $46 trillion investment (beyond energy infrastructure investment expected in BAU scenarios) if we intend to halve carbon emissions by 2050 (from 2005 levels). And, the IEA adds, a carbon price alone will not be sufficient to drive that level of investment.
In the face of numerous energy dilemmas there is a growing consensus that energy innovation offers a pathway to the most important solutions of our time. As the White House and Congress seem flummoxed by what steps to take next, it may be time to look to history for some guidance.
Just ten years into the second millennium, the U.S. finds itself in a situation complicated by a catastrophic oil spill dumping hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf, a badly wounded, if recovering, economy whose historic dominance is being ably challenged, and a growing demand for energy that must be produced without hastening the impacts of climate change. There is a growing consensus that energy innovation offers a pathway to the solutions for all of these challenges, but the White House and Congress seem flummoxed by what steps to take next. As TIME magazine's Bryan Walsh suggests in his latest cover story (subs. req'd) profiling the influence of Thomas Edison's innovative genius on the energy industry in the 20th century, it may be time to look to history for some guidance.
As Walsh explains, Edison "spent his career "inventing the century" - the 20th century." But he did not devise the inventions that gave birth to the electrical power industry (not to mention the recorded music and motion picture industries) in a vacuum. Instead, Edison's innovative potential was nurtured from a young age and as an adult, he continued to encourage his creativity by surrounding himself with others whose knowledge base could help him realize his ideas.
Eight universities and think tanks have all converged on four policy principles to enhance technology innovation in the effort to mitigate climate change, says a new report released earlier this week by the Clean Air Task Force and the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (CSPO) at Arizona State University.
The report, "Four Policy Principles for Energy Innovation & Climate Change: A Synthesis" (PDF) combined the recommendations made in eight studies conducted by universities like Harvard and MIT as well as think tanks like the Brookings Institution and the National Commission on Energy Policy to create the following four policy principles:
1. Recognize that innovation policy is more than R&D policy
2. Pursue multiple innovation pathways
3. Recognize CO2 reduction as a public good, and pursue energy innovation through a public works model.
4. Encourage collaboration on energy innovation with rapidly industrializing countries.
Despite the independence of the teams, we found remarkable convergence on some very basic principles that should guide the design of workable, comprehensive clean energy innovation policies. Key among them is that we are going to have to deploy lots of real stuff at a large scale in the field - and not just in the lab - to innovate our way toward a solution. That's not going to be cheap, but it is going to be worth it. We need to start yesterday.
The report is one of four reports released this month calling for a strengthened, robust commitment to U.S. clean tech innovation policy. The Breakthrough Institute co-released two of those reports -- one arguing that Congress must support legislation to improve U.S. clean tech competitiveness and the other demonstrating that the Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act would increase energy R&D funding by as little as $2.2 billion per year. The third, a report released by the new American Energy Innovation Council, called for a tripling of public investment in clean energy R&D.
Update (6/30/10):Andrew Revkin highlighted the ITIF report today on his blog, Dot Earth, noting that "the report is a healthy challenge to anyone, including me, with ingrained views on how to propel an "energy quest." Breakthrough has consistently worked to debunk many of the myths highlighted in ITIF's report. For additional reading, click the links in the list below.
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation has released a new report dismantling the top ten myths in the climate change debate, including the claim that "we have all the technologies we need" and that carbon prices are enough to drive a transition to a clean energy economy. The full report is well worth the read, but here's a summary from ITIF:
The debate on policy responses to climate change is fueled by myths ranging from assumptions that high carbon taxes will alter behavior significantly to overconfidence that green energy is poised to restore our economic prosperity overnight. What's more, many analysts are glossing over the complexity and possible unfairness of cap-and-trade and underestimating just how big a dent we have to make in our greenhouse gas production. What is missing is an understanding that innovation in the energy sector is essential to the transformation in how we produce and consume energy that we want and need. ITIF dismantles the top ten myths in this debate in a new report.
By re-thinking how the federal government can foster innovation and competitiveness in clean energy, from education and research to commercialization and production, the United States can once again become a global leader in clean energy technology.
By Jesse Jenkins, Mark Muro, and Rob Atkinson, originally at the New Republic
Having passed the U.S. House of Representatives on May 28th, the America COMPETES Act, America's flagship competitiveness legislation, will soon be debated in the U.S. Senate. The Act was originally passed in 2007 in response to mounting concern that the United States was failing to effectively compete economically with other nations, imperiling the nation's future prosperity.
Now, a new outbreak of anxiety has engulfed the nation's competitive standing particularly as regards the nation's fledgling clean energy industry. Presently, the United States lacks an effective strategy to compete in this high-growth industry, which is expected to surpass $600 billion globally by 2020. Fortunately, the America COMPETES reauthorization offers a key opportunity for Congress to strengthen U.S. clean energy competitiveness.
In a new policy report, the Breakthrough Institute, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program call on Congress to strengthen clean energy competitiveness through the America COMPETES reauthorization.
Congress first passed this flagship competitiveness legislation in 2007 in response to concerns that the United States was losing its ability to compete economically with other nations. On May 28, 2010, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the COMPETES reauthorization by a vote of 262-150 and the bill is set to be debated in the Senate. The reauthorization comes at a time when the United States seeks new sources of growth in a fiscally constrained environment. The clean energy market is one such growth industry--expected to surpass $600 billion by 2020--but the U.S. faces unprecedented global competition.
In "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant," an authoritative report on international clean energy competitiveness, the Breakthrough Institute and ITIF recently demonstrated how U.S. leadership on a number of clean energy competitiveness metrics has declined in the last decade. The United States' historic lead in energy innovation is slipping as other countries implement national innovation strategies. America now lags economic competitors in Asia and Europe in the manufacture of virtually all clean energy technologies. And the U.S. lags its economic rivals in preparing its future workforce with critical science, technology, engineering and math education (STEM).
The new report argues that to regain leadership in the global clean energy market, the United States must prioritize major investments in clean energy technology and embrace bold new paradigms in clean energy education, innovation, and production and manufacturing policy.
"Meeting the aggressive challenges to U.S. clean energy leadership will require both increased funding for critical education and technology programs as well as new ideas for how the federal government can foster innovation in the clean energy industry, from basic research to full-scale commercialization," said Mark Muro, Director of Policy at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Project.
The Brookings Institution is out with a new policy brief today building on their prior calls for energy discovery innovation institutes (e-DIIs). These regionally-based, collaborative research centers are designed to "serve as the hubs of a distributed research network linking the nation's best scientists, engineers, and facilities." The newest report assesses the potential for e-DII's in the Great Lakes region.
Through such a network, the nation could at once increase its current inadequate energy R&D effort and complement existing resources with a new research paradigm that would join the unique capabilities of America's research universities to those of corporate R&D and federal laboratories.
Brookings' vision for creating an energy innovation network is consonant with a similar concept put forward by the Breakthrough Institute and Third Way in "Jumpstarting a Clean Energy Revolution with a National Institutes of Energy" which called for a national commitment to energy innovation modeled on the National Institutes of Health.
A new report by WWF confirms that the potential economic gains associated with clean energy exports are huge, but falls short in advancing an effective strategy for the U.S. to compete. More than pricing carbon and subsidizing clean energy in perpetuity, U.S. competitiveness in clean energy requires a comprehensive federal investment strategy in clean energy innovation and deployment to make clean energy cheap in real, unsubsidized terms.
A new report by the World Wildlife Fund outlines the enormous potential economic gains associated with clean energy export market share. The report, however, misses a critical opportunity to advance the most effective solution to declining U.S. clean energy competitiveness -- major public investment in clean technology innovation and deployment to make clean energy cheap.
Three-quarters of additional energy demand between now and 2050 is expected to occur in developing countries, according to the new report, suggesting that any national strategy to capitalize on the economic benefits of the growing clean energy industry must also focus on boosting clean energy exports.
"If US businesses capture 14% market share (which reflects current US exports in environmental goods and services in developing countries) in just a subset of this new clean technology market, it would result in up to 850,000 new American jobs"
But the policies that WWF recommends--putting a rising price on carbon and subsidizing clean energy in the developing world--will fail on their own to deliver on the promise of securing U.S. market share both domestically and abroad.
Before a Senate Finance Subcommittee, ITIF President and "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant" co-author Rob Atkinson testified in support of incentives for US clean energy manufacturing as part of a comprehensive strategy for clean energy competitiveness.
Testifying before the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Energy, Natural Resources and Infrastructure, ITIF President and "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant" co-author Rob Atkinson spoke in support of incentives for US clean energy manufacturing as part of a comprehensive strategy for clean energy competitiveness. Building on Breakthrough's work with him on "Rising Tigers," Atkinson warned that a carbon price, and other demand side policies, are not enough to spur the kind of innovation necessary to ensure clean energy competitiveness.
Below are some highlights from his testimony. You can read the full testimony here.
Global climate policy should be radically overhauled in the wake of the failure of the United Nations process, an international group of 14 climate policy experts and scientists argue in the "Hartwell Paper." Instead of the failed Kyoto-Copenhagen focus on national emissions targets and timetables, what's needed is a focus on expanding access to energy for the poor, quickly reducing non-CO2 climate forcings, and adaptation to changing climate.
Global climate policy should be radically overhauled in the wake of the failure of the United Nations process, an international group of 14 climate policy experts and scientists argue in a new paper. The Kyoto-Copenhagen focus on national emissions targets and timetables was bound to fail because it proposed a single over-arching framework to deal with a "wickedly' complex problem. Instead what's needed is a focus on expanding access to energy for the poor, quickly reducing non-CO2 climate forcings, and adaptation to changing climate.
The paper brings together a set of ideas that have been developing over the last decade. The meeting was convened by Gwyn Prins of London School of Ecomomics and Steve Rayner of Oxford University, who wrote "The Wrong Trousers," a 2007 critique of Kyoto. The group included, among others, East Anglia University climate scientist Mike Hulme, author of "Why We Disagree About Climate Change," Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute, the economist Chris Green, co-author of a 2002 Science article calling for advanced energy research to stabilize climate emissions, and University of Colorado's Roger Pielke and Arizona State's Dan Sarewitz, authors of a 2000 Atlantic magazine story arguing climate policy to shift focus to technology innovation and adaptation. Green, Pielke, and Sarewitz are all Breakthrough Senior Fellows.
The bottom line: putting a price on carbon or regulating emissions is not sufficient to address the nation's climate problem or seize the economic opportunities in the fast-growing clean energy sector. Any Senate climate bill worth it's salt must clear the critical clean energy innovation threshold: $15-25 billion a year invested in clean energy technology innovation.
What is clear, though, is this: To get to a good bill senators need to deal properly with the revenue--whether from offshore oil drilling or pollution allowance auctions or whatever else is in the bill. And to do that they need to make sure a huge chunk of it gets applied to clean-energy research and development. Get that right and much else needn't be perfect. Blow that, and the bill is likely not worth it.
... The bottom line is this: Putting a price on carbon, or regulating emissions, ... while absolutely necessary, will not be sufficient to address the nation's climate problem and will, importantly, not put the U.S. in the position to seize the extraordinary opportunities that will come with rebuilding to global energy economy. Also necessary, as we keep saying, will be a major drive to promote large-scale technology breakthroughs. No matter how you measure it, U.S. government investment in clean energy R&D remains grossly inadequate. Right now clean energy R&D accounts for only around $3 billion a year. But if we're going to see real progress in de-carbonizing the present economy and creating the next one this number should be closer to $15 billion and probably as much as $25 billion per year.
So that's the target: $15 to $25 billion a year is "the number"--the critical investment threshold for federal clean energy investment that must become a core benchmark for evaluating any and all federal climate, energy, or indeed appropriations deal making.
Mark notes the rumors and reports of the still-not-yet-public drafts of the K-G-L bill do not bode well for the bill's ability to clear this critical clean energy innovation threshold...
We have compelling reasons to drive for clean, cheap energy, but we lack the technology to get there today. Threats of climate change, national competitiveness and energy security (OK, "clean, cheap, domestic energy") all contribute to the urgency of this innovation challenge. Given the scale of the challenge, coupled with the dire consequences of not succeeding, it is only natural that we'd look for reassurance and guidance from historical success stories of large-scale innovation.
Most frequently mentioned are the Apollo Project ("land a man on the moon by the end of the decade"), and the Manhattan Project ("develop nuclear weapons before our enemies"). They are attractive because they had urgent time tables, required outside-the-box innovation, and most importantly, as measured by their stated goals, were wildly successful. They provide some confidence that we (or maybe even just the President) need only to make the decision, and it will happen!
Cape Wind was a momentous clean energy victory but if climate change advocates truly take the immense scale of the energy and climate challenge seriously, we must ensure that this is the last time that a new zero-carbon energy source faces such prolonged NIMBY opposition.
Al Gore has called on the U.S. to "commit to producing 100% of electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon free sources within ten years." But the ten-year hard-fought battle to secure approval for Cape Wind shows that we cannot come close to meeting even a fraction of his goal if we do not appreciate the scale of energy challenge and the incredible pace of clean energy innovation and deployment required to truly reduce carbon emissions and mitigate climate change.
First, let's put Cape Wind in perspective. A $1 billion dollar project, America's first offshore wind farm will consist of 130 turbines that can produce roughly 1.6 billion kWh of electricity annually, enough to power three-quarters of the homes on Nantucket and surrounding islands. But on a national scale, this iconic project will only meet about 0.04% of the total (forecasted) U.S electricity demand in 2010, expected to be about 3,784 billion kWh.
Yesterday's column in the NYT by Thomas Friedman illustrates why efforts to put a price on carbon are not going to do much at all to stimulate energy technology innovation. Friedman writes:
After months of heroic negotiations, Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joseph Lieberman had forged a bipartisan climate/energy/jobs bill that, while far from perfect, would have, for the first time, put a long-term fixed price on carbon -- precisely the kind of price signal U.S. industry and consumers need to start really shifting the economy to clean-power innovations. . .
Without that price signal, you will never get sustained consumer demand for, or sustained private investment in, clean-power technologies. All you will get are hobbies. . .
I'd love to see the president come out, guns blazing with this message: "Yes, if we pass this energy legislation, a small price on carbon will likely show up on your gasoline or electricity bill. I'm not going to lie. But it is an investment that will pay off in so many ways. It will spur innovation in energy efficiency that will actually lower the total amount you pay for driving, heating or cooling. It will reduce carbon pollution in the air we breathe and make us healthier as a country. It will reduce the money we are sending to nations that crush democracy and promote intolerance. It will strengthen the dollar. It will make us more energy secure, environmentally secure and strategically secure. . . "
It is not clear what that "price on carbon" is in the legislation or how widely it would be applied, but for the purposes of discussion, let's just say that it starts at $15 per metric ton of carbon dioxide and is applied economy-wide.
Out of the scramble over the thrice-delayed Kerry/Graham/Lieberman climate bill, various policy alternatives have emerged. Grassroots greens are arguing for cap and dividend but high tech leaders including Bill Gates are calling for an explicit energy technology innovation agenda that - if backed by a direct, large-scale plan for investment - could leave carbon pricing alternatives by the wayside.
Out of the scramble over the thrice-delayed Kerry/Graham/Lieberman (KGL or "keggles") climate bill have emerged various alternatives, with grassroots greens arguing for cap and dividend and high tech leaders including Bill Gates calling for an explicit technology innovation agenda.
Earlier this month, Bill McKibben advocated in The New Republic for the Cantwell-Collins CLEAR Act, claiming it would solve the political problem of raising energy costs because it would rebate some of the pollution allowances to consumers -- "three-quarters will come out ahead," McKibben claims, "with only real energy hogs hurting .
It is simply not true that the government should not or cannot pick technological winners and losers. That was ITIF President Rob Atkinson's message in a piece today at Huffington Post. Indeed, as Atkinson writes, the government has always picked winners and in the process, has developed entire new industries, like IT, that have formed the foundation of economic prosperity and the basis of our modern way of life. What would our lives be like if we had left everything to the "free market"?
From Huffington Post:
"But the free market opponents will say how can Washington outsmart the market? Is this the same market that through its infinite wisdom invested hundreds of billions of subprime mortgages? In fact, the government has a pretty good track record of picking winners. Just look at the technologies that the government had a key role in developing: the Internet, the web browser, the search engine, computer graphics, semiconductors, and a host of others. There are many other examples of success stories made possible not because government anointed a particular young entrepreneur but because the government made a conscious choice to open new pathways into which young innovators could embark."
A few weeks ago, at an event on the same subject, Atkinson and former-Reaganite Clyde Prestowitz took the neoliberal free market ideologues including former Clintonite, Robert Lawrence (ironic?) to task for their ahistorical views. Amidst all the anti-government fervor lies the true but unconventional wisdom: the government can and should pick technological winners. Our economic prosperity depends on it.
Update: As Alexis Madrigal points out at WIRED, it's great to see the list of "heavy hitters" on the American Energy Innovation Council embrace a technology innovation agenda like the one Breakthrough has been working to advance. Let's hope this welcome show of support will be followed up by a serious commitment of financial resources.
An op-ed from Microsoft's Bill Gates and DuPont's Chad Holliday gives voice to the private sector's support for public investment in clean energy because energy, as Breakthrough has long argued, "requires a public commitment."
Gates and Holliday lay out three reasons why the private sector can't make this investment on its own:
What makes energy different from, say, electronics? Three things.
First, there are profound public interests in having more energy options. Our national security, economic health and environment are at issue. These are not primary motivations for private-sector investments, but they merit a public commitment.
Second, the nature of the energy business requires a public commitment. A new generation of television technology might cost $10 million to develop. Because those TVs can be built on existing assembly lines, that risk-reward calculus makes business sense. But a new electric power source can cost several billion dollars to develop and still carry the risk of failure. That investment does not compute for most companies.
Third, the turnover in our power system is very slow. Power plants last 50 years or more, and they are very cheap to run once built, meaning there is little market for new models.
It is understandable, then, why private-sector investments in clean energy technology are so small. Yet, while it may make sense for individual companies to make these choices, accepting the status quo would condemn our country to very bad options.
The Copenhagen climate talks may have been a symbolic success according to some, but the Accord won't mitigate climate change and the forthcoming Kerry/Graham/Lieberman climate bill will not lead to technology innovation. These failures, notes Michael Lind in a new white paper, show the collapse of the climate paradigm and the need to redefine our approach to climate change in terms of technology
The climate negotiations in Copenhagen resulted in a 193-nation agreement that included 154 policy commitments -- "the highest number of new government initiatives ever recorded . . . in a four-month period," according to Deutsche Bank -- but do they really matter?
In the months since the frenetic, and at times, apoplectic UNFCCC meeting, two conflicting views have emerged.
A report released earlier this month by Deutsche Bank (DB) presented analysis like those from Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Center for American Progress (CAP) showing the talks were "no failure."
"Today, on Earth Day, let's celebrate American ingenuity. We have it within ourselves to lead the world to a better place based on our dreams, our engineers and our innovation system."
Today, on the 40th Earth Day, we look back at where we've come from, but also look forward to where we'd like to go. And while, as Americans, we're compelled to look towards Washington and focus on what our politicians have done in past, and may or may not do in the future, on behalf of the environment, we also need to look at our innovation system and how we keep it healthy as well.
At any point in time we can point to past innovations as the root cause of our environmental issues, but we also have a history of being able to innovate better solutions once we understand these impacts. We've gotten lead out of paint, CFCs out of a variety of products, created increasingly efficient internal combustion engines, and on and on.
Two new posts for Earth Day argue that we need to move from nature protection to tech innovation. Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger are in Slate and Mother Jones arguing that the focus on technology transfer as part of a global climate agreement is a distraction: clean tech IP has already been rapidly transferred to China -- soon it will be transferred back here.
Politicians talking about clean energy jobs like to claim "they can't be shipped overseas." From President Obama's State of the Union to Rep. Ed Markey stumping for the climate bill he co-authored with Rep. Henry Waxman, the promise of new "green jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced" is an all too common refrain.
The only problem with it is that it's wrong on its face.
America is already exporting clean energy jobs -- or seeing them created abroad in the first place. After pioneering wind and solar power, electric cars, and nuclear plants, America turned its back on the public investments in cutting edge technology that catalyzed these innovations, forfeiting cleantech industries to foreign countries who did not make the same mistakes. The cap and trade program at the heart of the climate bill authored by Rep. Markey may help create more clean energy jobs overseas, but it won't bring those jobs back to America. Conventional responses to today's competitiveness challenge won't cut it. Here's what will...
During a panel hosted by Waxman-Markey proponent, Center for American Progress, ITIF president Rob Atkinson argued that cap and trade was not sufficient to catalyze a clean energy future, proposing instead, policy focused on public investment in innovation to make clean energy cheap and abundant.
Speaking at a panel on building a clean energy economy, ITIF President and "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant" co-author Rob Atkinson declared that current technologies are not enough to create a competitive domestic clean energy industry and that major investments in energy innovation are necessary to make clean energy cheap and abundant.
The increased competition for GE from local companies in China is due in part to a massive push by the Chinese government to promote clean energy and R&D. In recent years, it has rolled out a range of renewable energy targets and financial incentives, including significant tax breaks for companies that invest in research related to energy...
The GE research center has also been key for the development of wind-power technology, including power electronics hardware and software that allow wind turbines to keep operating after lightning strikes and other events cause sudden drops in voltage on the power grid. The center has now produced 20 patents in this general area, says Yunfeng Liu, the manager of GE's power conversion lab in Shanghai. Such technology can also make the grid more stable than it would be without the presence of wind turbines, by helping to maintain the necessary voltages and frequencies on transmission lines.
"Jumpstarting a Clean Energy Revolution with a National Institutes of Energy," a policy memo co-authored by the Breakthrough Institute's Director of Climate and Energy Policy, Jesse Jenkins, and Third Way's Joshua Freed and Avi Zevin, is a joint effort by both think tanks to jumpstart American energy research and development.
The memo calls for a national commitment to energy innovation that includes direct support for the research and development of new and existing clean technologies and creates a structure for energy research, modeled on the National Institutes of Health, capable of coordinating large scale R&D efforts.
The memo acknowledges that the U.S. faces a "defining challenge" in its effort to transition to clean energy. Based on historical evidence of national commitments made to confront significant challenges, the authors suggest two key components of a national effort to address the clean energy challenge in the United States.
1) Increase federal investment in energy R&D by $15 billion per year: In line with President Obama's 2009 budget request, the scale of investment for comparable national priorities, and the recommendations of innovation experts, the authors propose a sustained $15 billion per year increase in federal clean energy R&D to approximately $20 billion per year. This level of funding is necessary to both create new breakthrough technologies and drive improvements to existing technology, enabling the production of clean energy at significantly higher efficiencies and lower costs.
2) Create a National Institutes of Energy: Modeled on the National Institutes of Health, a new National Institutes of Energy (NIE) would effectively apply R&D funding to the development of new, low-cost commercial clean energy technologies. The NIE would function as a nationwide network of regionally based, commercially focused, and coordinated innovation institutes. Alongside other effective federal energy R&D agencies, an NIE would critically strengthen the U.S. clean energy innovation system.
Accelerating U.S. clean technology innovation, manufacturing, and market creation has become not just an environmental necessity but an economic imperative. A report by Jesse Jenkins and Devon Swezey.
Current climate legislation in Congress, with its low price on carbon, ineffective renewable electricity standard, and collection of efficiency regulations, will not be enough for the United States to catch up to countries like China in building the clean energy industries of the future. Without a clean energy competitiveness strategy that can competed with those implemented around the world, America will lose out on one of the greatest economic opportunities of the 21st century.
By Jesse Jenkins and Devon Swezey
Accelerating U.S. clean technology innovation, manufacturing, and market creation has become not just an environmental necessity but an economic imperative. A recent Pew study showed that the global clean energy industry has experienced rapid investment growth over the last five years. New clean tech investments in 2009 reached $162 billion, which is expected to grow 25 percent to $200 billion in 2010. With the global clean energy economy emerging as one of the largest economic opportunities of the 21st century, government policy and public investment will be critical determinants of which countries come out on top in the race to attract private sector investment in clean energy technologies.
The United States is currently behind other nations in this race, and lacks an effective national strategy to compete. Climate legislation proposed in Congress to date, with its low price on carbon, ineffective renewable electricity standard, and collection of efficiency regulations, will not be enough for the United States to catch up to countries like China in building the clean energy industries of the future. To regain leadership in the global clean technology industry, the United States must enact a comprehensive clean energy competitiveness strategy that prioritizes major public investments in clean energy innovation, manufacturing, market development, education, and infrastructure.
This was the topic of a presentation we gave at the World Energy Technologies Summit in New York City last month. The theme of the conference, which was sponsored by TIME Magazine, was providing a "Reality Check" on the current state of energy technology and policy. The two of us therefore presented a wake-up call about America's lagging position in the global clean energy race, uncovered the realities behind several common myths about U.S. clean energy competitiveness, and outlined what the United States government must do to truly compete for the clean energy industries and markets of the future. After the video of our presentation below, this post summarizes each of these three key topics.
Created in response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has done some pretty wondrous things as a result of its efforts to "formulate and execute R&D projects that would expand the frontiers of technology beyond the immediate and specific requirements of the Military Services and their laboratories".
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is different from other federal agencies. For one thing, the agency, known as Darpa, created the Internet (really). For another, it is probably the only agency ever to offer a $40,000 prize for a balloon hunt, a contest that was inspired by Regina Dugan, a 47-year-old expert in mine detection, who took over last summer as its director.
Aside from a number of military innovations such as the Air Force F-117 Stealth Fighter, unmanned aerial drones, and the M16 assault rifle, DARPA is also responsible for a surprising number of innovations that have proven to be gamechangers, even in times of peace.
In addition to the Internet, (which is tough to top), DARPA is responsible for the global positioning satellite system (GPS). In other words, thank DARPA for your handy iPhone.
Obama invokes this classic imagery in his video message explaining the history of Earth Day.
Forty-one years ago, in the city of Cleveland, people watched in horror as the Cuyahoga river, choked with debris and covered in oil, caught on fire. Images of the burning Cuyahoga shocked the nation and it led one Wisconsin senator, the following year, to organize the first Earth Day to call attention to the dangers of ignoring our environment.
But as Michael and Ted wrote in Break Through in 2007, the image of the burning river that purportedly catalyzed Earth Day and the modern environmental movement was actually taken in 1952, not 1969, because the "historic" latter fire didn't even burn long enough to be photographed.
An Indian Finance Minister recently proposed instating a per-ton tax on coal in order to raise revenue for clean energy research and innovation. The policy is a prime example of the right way to put fees on dirty energy to work -- using them to raise revenue for public investment that can catalyze clean energy innovation and adoption. It is also further evidence that both rich and poor nations can find many reasons, in addition to climate concerns, to decarbonize.
India's recent proposal to tax coal (per ton) and allocate the money to a "National Clean Energy Fund (NCEF)" to finance clean energy innovation largely flew under the radar, but the policy is notable for two important reasons. First, India's plan is a prime example of the right way to put fees on dirty energy to work -- using them to raise revenue for public investment that can catalyze clean energy innovation and adoption. Second, the proposed policy is further evidence that both rich and poor nations can find many reasons, in addition to climate concerns, to decarbonize - another point central to the Breakthrough Institute's energy strategies.
Included by the Indian Minister of Finance, Pranab Mukherjee, as part of the 2010 Budget, the clean energy "cess" (a term for tax), would raise the price of each ton of coal by Rs. 50 (USD$1.10).
Last month, Ted and I argued in Yale e360 that there were reasons for decarbonization other than climate change -- many commenters were incredulous. For example: "Although, fwiw, the content of their message is wrong and frankly stupid as well -- what 'bipartisan agreement has grown on the need to decarbonize our energy' exists that is divorced from climate change concerns?"
"America's 250-year supply of coal will be an important source of energy. But even people not much worried about the supposed climate damage done by carbon emissions should see the wisdom--cheaper electricity, less dependence on foreign sources of energy--of Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander's campaign to commit the country to building 100 more nuclear power plants in 20 years."
Breakthrough Project Director Devon Swezey discusses the growing clean tech investment gap between the United States and China and what it means for U.S. competitiveness in the global clean energy sector.
Devon Swezey, Project Director at Breakthrough Institute, appeared on KPFA radio's Morning Show today to discuss the growing clean tech investment gap between China and the United States, and what the United States needs to do to regain some leadership in the burgeoning clean tech industry.
The segment with Morning Show host Brian Edwards-Tiekert begins at the 22 minute mark. You can listen below or click here to download an MP3 of the segment.
Originally posted at Breakthrough Senior Fellow David Douglas's blog, Near Walden.
Bloom Energy's recent announcement of their fuel cell-based "energy server" drew lots of attention from the press, and for good reason. It set some nice marks for performance, and, if successful, will likely be the first of a new market category of energy products.
At Sun we looked at this technology a couple of years back. The use case was as the backup for a datacenter, and to switch to it as primary power when grid power was more expensive (e.g. mid-day in the summer during peak AC time). In this example the technology would enable us to change our view of backup power, from something we only use in emergencies to an energy insurance plan against rising costs. If I recall the only issue was the number of the units that would be required to support a MW or higher datacenter, but improvements in their technology have likely reduced this problem in the meantime.
Beyond work applications, I can't wait to see the home version of this technology, providing electricity and hot water from a single process. Hopefully the folks at Bloom or one of their competitors is working on a version for that!
But putting my nerdish desires aside, its useful to use this milestone to look at the environment in which the Bloom technology came into being. In this case there are two interesting aspects.
IBM's announcement that it will invest $40 million in an energy R&D center in China is further evidence that without a national strategy for clean tech competitiveness that includes public investment in both innovation and manufacturing, America's once dominant lead in energy innovation could quickly disappear.
A recent announcement that IBM will invest $40 million in an"energy and utilities solutions lab" is further evidence that China's large-scale investments in clean tech are attracting private investment in R&D, not just manufacturing.
This latest news from IBM will be difficult for pundits like Thomas Friedman and Brad Plumer to ignore. Friedman and Plumer have argued that the U.S. will be able to maintain its competitive edge in innovation even as clean tech manufacturing relocates overseas.
IBM is not the first, nor is it likely to be the last to set-up a clean-tech R&D center in China. Dow Chemical opened one last June and a few months later Applied Materials follow suit, opening an advanced solar R&D center in Xi'an.
The careers needed to secure competitive clean energy industries will run the gamut from cutting-edge researchers and high-tech engineers to innovative designers and fearless entrepreneurs, and Congress has so-far failed to make the investments necessary to RE-ENERGYSE a new generation of intrepid American innovators.
When you think 'green jobs,' do you conjure images of green hard hats, caulk guns, and tool belts? Well it might be time to start thinking about 'green' lab beakers, 'green' drafting tables and 'green' brief cases as well, because the careers needed to secure competitive clean energy industries will also run the gamut from cutting-edge researchers and high-tech engineers to innovative designers and fearless entrepreneurs, according to Dr. Henry Kelly, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency.
So what is a green job? Well green jobs are architects and engineers that build buildings, design buildings that operate at extremely low energy use. They are people that design, manufacture, and install devices in buildings ranging from high-tech windows to lighting to sensors and controls and electronics. It means looking at radically new industrial processes which simply replace previous kinds of industrial manufacturing with sophisticated bionumetics and nanotech approaches, to cutting down the material intensity and energy intensity of production, this is the kind of thing you need to do to stay competitive in the modern world.
If you look at what the nation's transportation system is going to look like, Henry Ford looks like he's toast, it's going to be replaced with an entirely new generation of either extremely high efficiency fuel powered vehicles, electric vehicles, perhaps even hydrogen fuel cells - the people that make and maintain these are going to be operating in a different world that's an enormously sophisticated operation.
If you're looking at where power comes from, of course you have the entire range of science and engineering involved, you mentioned we're relying on geologists to tell us how to get geothermal energy, getting very sophisticate semiconductor manufacturers involved in the production of solar cells and CSP, if you look at biologically based fuels and materials, some of the most sophisticated biological processing techniques.
So this is an enormous range of skills, but apart from the technical skills you also need people who really understand the economics of finance... behavioral economics, people who understand policy, all of these qualify as green jobs and it touches I think almost every academic discipline.
The good news is that if we do this right we're generating a lot of new interesting jobs, not just for sophisticated designers but for people who are manufacturing and operating these.
Speaking to a packed auditorium at Stanford University, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu called for a Manhattan Project for energy, emphasizing the need for "tens of billions of dollars" annually in public funding for energy technology innovation, but he missed a golden opportunity to inspire and rally our nation's future leaders to tackle the political, economic, and technological hurdles standing in the way of a clean, prosperous U.S. energy economy.
The federal government should be investing "tens of billions of dollars" annually to drive a Manhattan Project-style pace of innovation necessary to address the scale of the energy challenge facing the U.S., said Energy Secretary Steven Chu yesterday.
"If you look at the amount of funding for that [the Manhattan Project], and the amount of funding to put a man on the moon, it was a huge spike in funding. I think we do need that. The recovery act actually was the start of that...you still need I think tens of billions of dollars as a minimum per year invested in these technologies and the associated science. The DOE, our base budget for energy research is on a scale of $3 billion...the primary energy industry budget is about $1 trillion, if it's a high tech industry 10-20% is the usable amount of sale that you invest so that's $200 billion, so what we're investing in federal dollar is less than 1% of that or on a scale of 1% of what should be invested."
The Secretary highlighted the steps the Department of Energy was taking to encourage innovation given the limited funds available, including including the launch of the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy and several Energy Innovation Hubs (nicknamed Bell-lablets) based on the storied Bell Labs innovation model.
This week, U.S. clean tech news is almost as dramatic as the buzz surrounding the 2010 Academy Awards. And while the outcome of intensifying competition has more serious implications in the clean tech sector, like any motion picture worthy of a nomination, there's a very distinct underlying theme to the clean tech drama unfolding: the U.S. needs a national strategy for clean tech competitiveness.
As Joan Fitzgerald suggested in a lengthy American Prospect piece in December, "America's failure to have a coherent, national industrial policy," has dire consequences for long-term economic competitiveness.
That's part of the reason the Department of Energy (DOE) held its inaugural ARPA-E Innovation Summit in Washington D.C. earlier this week, which amassed about 1,700 scientists, engineers, policymakers, investors, and entrepreneurs to discuss the details of a national competitiveness strategy.
This post collects the articles surrounding Bill Gates recent push for an innovation focused R&D agenda that aims to bring down the carbon intensity of energy production to zero CO2 within the next fifty years:
Gates: Efficiency Won't Cut It:Innovation, says Bill Gates, "not insulation," is the way for the United States to transform its energy sector and achieve its "80% by 2050" goal.
Bingaman and Gates Back Chu on Energy R&D:Energy Secretary Steven Chu is ready to stand up for R&D - and he's not alone - Sen. Jeff Bingaman and famous billionaire, Bill Gates, are joining Chu in his fight to make investment in clean energy R&D a policy priority.
Innovating to Zero: Gates Wants Clean, Cheap Energy Fast:Despite the philanthropic focus of his foundation, Bill Gates confided to a rapt audience at the TED conference last week that if he could have one wish granted he wouldn't ask for "vaccines or seeds," he'd ask for clean, cheap energy, and fast.
To Make Poverty History, Make Clean Energy Cheap:Bill Gates understands the challenge of poverty alleviation, which is why he's identified the most critical global imperative to make poverty history: making clean energy cheap.
The growing movement to make clean energy cheap, and to deliver that energy globally, has the potential to alleviate as much human suffering and injustice as some of the largest, concerted social movements in history.
"If you gave me only one wish for the next 50 years," declared the world's wealthiest man during last week's TED 2010 conference, "I can pick who is president, I can pick a vaccine - or I can pick that an [energy technology] at half the cost with no carbon emissions gets invented, this is the wish I would pick. This is the one with the greatest impact."
Bill Gates is right. And he is not just talking about the impact on climate change, which does of course present a major threat. He is also talking about one of the most critical global imperatives to make poverty history: making clean energy cheap.
"If you could pick just one thing to lower the price of to reduce poverty, by far you would pick energy," said Gates in his introduction. Gates should know as well as any development expert, since the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation - the world's largest transparent private foundation - has invested billions of dollars in extreme poverty alleviation since 1994.
Nearly 1.6 billion of our fellow human beings have no access to electricity, and around 2.4 billion people - over one third of global population - meet their basic cooking and heating needs by burning biomass, such as wood, crop waste, and dung. "Without access to modern, commercial energy, poor countries can be trapped in a vicious circle of poverty, social instability and underdevelopment," concludes the International Energy Agency.
Despite the philanthropic focus of his foundation, Bill Gates confided to a rapt audience at the TED conference last week that if he could have one wish granted he wouldn't ask for "vaccines or seeds," he'd ask for clean, cheap energy, and fast.
Update: You can view Bill Gates' TED speech below or by clicking here.
Bill Gates wants clean, cheap energy more than he wants to pick the next 50 years worth of presidents, even more than he wants a miracle vaccine. At least that's how he ranked his number one wish while describing climate change as the world's greatest challenge to a rapt audience at the TED conference last week.
Just weeks after lending his voice to a growing "innovation consensus" by writing on his blog, Gates Notes, that innovation, not just insulation, must be the focus if we are serious about "getting to zero," Gates' TED speech expanded on what we need to get there:
"We need energy miracles. The microprocessor and internet are miracles. This is a case where we have to drive and get the miracle in a short timeline."
Gates emphasized the need for an energy miracle portfolio that includes carbon capture and storage and nuclear as well as wind and solar. According to CNN's coverage of the conference (the video is not posted yet), Gates showed particular interest in the potential for nuclear waste reprocessing as a source of clean, cheap energy.
A largely-symbolic freeze on domestic spending is the wrong route to trim the deficit. Along with real entitlement reform and winding down the wars, smart government investments in broad-based economic growth must be the keystone of a three-part strategy to truly balance the federal budget. Take energy as a case in point, where investments now to catalyze competitive clean energy technologies and industries will pay big economic dividends down the line.
With rising anxiety about mounting federal deficits, President Obama declared a freeze on all non-defense discretionary spending in his latest budget proposal. Heavy on symbolism and light on impact, the Administration's proposal attacks all of the areas of the government least responsible for the inexorable increase in federal deficits, while potentially starving key parts of the discretionary budget critical to America's economic prosperity.
Let's be clear: ballooning deficits do pose a real long-term threat to the United States' economic security. Under current forecasts, the accumulated deficit could total $20 trillion by 2020. That could hobble Uncle Sam with interest payments on the federal debt nearly as large as the projected total for all domestic discretionary spending. Efforts clearly must be taken to avoid such an unsustainable - and risky - financial future.
That said, curbing domestic spending is the wrong route to trim the deficit. The President's spending freeze applies to only a small fraction of the federal budget, while exempting both the mounting costs of two wars and the ever-rising bill for the nation's entitlement programs - Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
By Breakthrough Fellow Danny Spitzberg and Stephen Collins
Earlier this week, fellow Daily Cardinal opinion writer Anthony Cefali posed a question:
"How do we inspire our science program to shoot for the moon, or at least our own modern equivalent?"
Well, we think we have an answer.
Look no further than clean energy. Some are calling it the biggest market opportunity in history. Experts of all stripes have repeatedly stated that the nation that wins the clean-energy race will be the nation that leads the 21st century economy. Discovering and implementing cheap, clean and reliable energy technologies is our generation's final frontier.
But, as Cefali asked, how do we get there? President Obama has proposed doing so by increasing funding for energy education and training through a program called RE-ENERGYSE (short for REgaining our ENERGY Science and Engineering Edge). More than 100 organizations, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, signed a letter last summer urging Congress to support the program, which would augment energy education in universities, training schools, community colleges and even K-12 teacher education. It's easy to see why: UW-Madison professor and energy policy expert Greg Nemet said that he thinks "maybe the biggest opportunity is to take advantage of the fact that we have tens of thousands of students here who could potentially be working on [creating a clean energy economy]." However, Congress ignored last summer's call to action by rejecting Obama's $115 million budget request for RE-ENERGYSE.
China is leading the global race to make clean energy, yet some observers are denying that there is a race at all. They are wrong. Neglecting to acknowledge the economic stakes in the clean energy race and failing to develop a strategy to compete are the reasons why the United States finds itself behind today.
Over at Green Chip Stocks, clean tech market analyst Nick Hodges asks, "Who's Winning the Clean Tech Arms Race?" The answer shouldn't surprise you. Nick cites the deficiencies in U.S. clean energy policy in relative to China's policies as a major reason that "the global clean tech game will be dominated by Chinese players for the foreseeable future."
With Chinese manufacturers poised to dominate emerging clean tech markets, where are all those green jobs that the Democrats have promised? Many of them are going to China, writes SUNY history professor Judith Stein in a recent op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Stein writes that green job rhetoric won't create green jobs without a plan to invest in clean energy manufacturing here in the United States:
"Green jobs are surely needed. But green Democrats simply echo the Atari Democrats of the 1980s, who concluded that traditional manufacturing was disposable and high technology was the wave of the future. During this era, the young Barack Obama attempted - and failed - to find jobs for displaced steelworkers in Chicago."
Stein also writes that China's manufacturing prowess has implications for clean tech innovation as well, as I argue below: "Meanwhile, the Chinese government offers huge subsidies to encourage green-technology manufacturers in the United States to move their production to China. And when manufacturing leaves, research and development operations follow. That's how China attracted battery and fuel-cell research formerly conducted in America."
By Devon Swezey
In his State of the Union Speech, President Obama issued what is now a familiar refrain: "the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy." If there were still doubts about which nation has the edge they were put to rest days later by a bluntly titled front-page article in the New York Times, "China is Leading Global Race to Make Clean Energy."
Though the story is not new, the article is the latest indication of the alacrity with which China has emerged as a clean energy powerhouse in the span of just a few years. China now manufactures more solar cells than any nation in the world, and recently surpassed the United States as the largest market for wind turbines in 2009. According to "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant," a recent study by the Breakthrough Institute, China is also a world leader in advanced transportation technologies and batteries, is increasingly localizing the production of nuclear power plants, and has developed some of the world's most advanced CCS technology.
Despite the mounting evidence, many have dismissed the idea that the United States is competing in a "clean energy race" with China, or that it matters.
Some critics assert that characterizing the intense competition as a "race" obscures the climate benefits of greater clean energy deployment throughout the world and the "win-win" nature of a global clean energy economy. The New Republic's Brad Plumer embodies this "it's all good" line of reasoning, writing:
If China zooms ahead and figures out how to make really cheap wind turbines, that doesn't hurt anyone--it just makes the enormous task of cutting global carbon emissions that much easier.
Plumer's casual attitude towards the economic consequences of ceding clean tech manufacturing leadership to China is a slap in the face to U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). The pair has been working hard to secure the new clean energy manufacturing jobs that can help revitalize the industrial heartland.
At Yale e360, environmental journalist Christina Larson similarly suggests that the United States has little to lose if China dominates emerging clean tech industries:
The United States will still gain many new green-collar jobs in installation and maintenance, which can only be locally based, as well as sales teams, conference planners, and other positions already arising to support the growing green-tech field.
Forget about the export-oriented, high-value added, high-wage clean energy manufacturing jobs of the future that Democrats have promised will jumpstart the ailing American economy; the clean energy conference organizing industry is now open for business.
The New America Foundation's Reihan Salam mocks the idea of a "clean technology race," arguing erroneously that the barriers to entry in clean energy are low and that any established competitive advantage will be "ephemeral."
He compares China's clean tech policies to Japan's policies of the 1980s, as if the Japanese government did not succeed in supporting the development of what are still world leading high technology industries in automobiles, electronics, and high value steel manufacturing. While Japan was investing in high-tech industries the United States was simultaneously accelerating the financialization of its economy, creating trillions of dollars of paper wealth that has largely vanished over the last two years.
Indeed, Salam admits that federal investment in technology has spawned entire new industries like aerospace and electronics, but takes pains to paint similar investments that can catalyze the development of new clean technologies as "disastrous."
Apparently our surging clean tech competitors in Asia and the EU didn't get the message.
In a letter to President Obama, clean tech entrepreneurs, investors, and stakeholders joined Sen. Jeff Bingaman in calling for the creation of a Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA) to support deployment, create clean energy jobs, and boost long-term U.S. economic competitiveness
A new Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA) is critical to "position the U.S. as the global leader in the development and deployment of clean energy technologies for years to come," according to a letter written by the country's leading clean tech entrepreneurs, investors, and stakeholders.
Thirteen leading clean tech companies, including Google, GE, and Kleiner Perkins, wrote to President Obama last week urging him to expedite the creation of a Clean Energy Deployment Administration along the parameters outlined by the Senate's American Clean Energy Leadership Act of 2009 (ACELA).
A new report by U.S. Senator Ron Wyden's (D-OR) office shows that the U.S. is rapidly losing international market share in clean energy technologies. In a Senate hearing last week, Wyden questioned Energy Secretary Steven Chu about falling U.S. competitiveness but the exchange ended with Wyden noting that it was "not clear what the strategy is" to stem the erosion of U.S. market share. As the Wyden report shows, a real clean tech competitiveness strategy, the kind we outline in "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant," could not be more urgent.
U.S. clean tech manufacturers are losing global market share to their international competitors. What is the federal government going to do about it?
That was the question posed last week to Energy Secretary Steven Chu as he testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Chu was speaking on the central role that energy research and development holds in any successful effort to mitigate climate change.
During questioning, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) quotes an earlier statement by Secretary Chu, calling it "the challenge of our time":
"The only question is which countries will invent, manufacture, and export clean technologies, and which countries will become dependent on foreign products?"
Unfortunately, the United States is headed in the wrong direction. According to Senator Wyden, who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness, "80% of clean energy investments are going to take place outside the United States, even though global trade in environmental goods has doubled just in the last few years."
The Challenge of Our Time: Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) asked about the U.S. government strategy to boost U.S. clean tech competitiveness, but wound up with more questions than answers.
A recently published report by Senator Wyden's office shows that global exports of environmental goods (the majority of which are associated with clean energy technologies) more than doubled to $215 billion from 2004 to 2008. While U.S. exports have certainly benefited from the major expansion in worldwide demand for clean tech products, it has steadily lost international market share as other nations move more aggressively to capture competitive advantages in the burgeoning clean energy sector.
In the United States, clean tech imports have grown faster than exports, and U.S. exports have not kept up with global demand or international competitors, leading to an erosion of market share for U.S. products. By contrast, other nations, particularly China, have dramatically boosted their exports over the five-year period with China experiencing the greatest value growth in clean tech exports of any nation in the world.
Key figures from the report include:
The United States is the largest import market of environmental goods (EG) as well as the fastest growing import market from 2004-2008 in terms of product value.
In the last five years, the U.S trade deficit in renewable energy products increased by 1,400% to nearly $5.7 billion.
The United States faces declining export market shares in virtually every regional market, while China has substantially increased its market share in every regional market, over the last five years.
In a late night press conference at the close of the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen, President Obama declared that a "meaningful deal" had been reached with major emitting nations moments before boarding Air Force One and returning to the United States. While the final structure of "the Copenhagen Accord" is still in question, the content and reverberations of President Obama's speech today leave little doubt that the UNFCCC process, for all intents and purposes, is dead. Whether it continues to shamble on like a zombie through sheer force of inertia is yet to be determined.
In a late night press conference at the close of the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen, President Obama declared that a "meaningful deal" had been reached with major emitting nations moments before boarding Air Force One and returning to the United States. While the final structure of "the Copenhagen Accord" is still in question, the content and reverberations of President Obama's speech today leave little doubt that the UNFCCC process, for all intents and purposes, is dead. Whether it continues to shamble on like a zombie through sheer force of inertia is yet to be determined...
Breaking free from the auspices of the UN's 190+ nation negotiating framework, major emitters, including the U.S., China, India, Brazil, and South Africa, appear poised to move forward with or without the rest of the UNFCCC nations.
According to a flurry of tweets and reports from observers on the ground in Copenhagen, Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, the Sudanese chairman of the "G77," a large group of developing nations, is crying bloody murder, declaring that the deal "locks countries into a cycle of poverty forever" and saying "Obama has eliminated any difference between him and Bush." The EU is grudgingly signing on to the accord "as better than no accord." And protestors, led by increasingly radical activist Bill McKibben, are gathering outside the Bella Center hoisting images of President Obama and crying "shame on you."
"The President has wrecked the UN (and the planet)," declared a press release from McKibben's 350.org.
In next week's New Yorker magazine, journalist Evan Osnos describes the critical role that the Chinese government has played in energy research and innovation. The government's "crash program for clean energy," in part modeled on earlier U.S. government research programs, has helped it catch up to the rest of the world in clean energy technology, and has even enabled it to exert technological leadership in some clean tech industries.
In a forthcoming edition of the New Yorker, journalist Evan Osnos has written a great long essay on the role of the Chinese government in clean energy innovation in China.
Osnos documents how, beginning with the 863 program in 1986, Chinese government officials made a conscious effort to "join the new technological revolution" and make investments in science and technology a priority. Nowhere is this decision more evident today than in the rapid development of clean energy technology in China. In 2001, driven by increasing pollution and concerns over energy security, the Chinese government expanded their investment in energy technology. In 2006, the government expanded their commitment even further, and announced targets for the development of a suite of clean energy technologies:
"In 2006, Chinese leaders redoubled their commitment to new energy technology; they boosted funding for research and set targets for installing wind turbines, solar panels, hydroelectric dams, and other renewable sources of energy that were higher than goals in the United States. China doubled its wind-power capacity that year, then doubled it again the next year, and the year after. The country had virtually no solar industry in 2003; five years later, it was manufacturing more solar cells than any other country, winning customers from foreign companies that had invented the technology in the first place. As President Hu Jintao, a political heir of Deng Xiaoping, put it in October of this year, China must "seize preëmptive opportunities in the new round of the global energy revolution."
China's 863 program was modeled in part after the American research system used by NIH and the Department of Defense, the latter of which was instrumental in making early investments in technology that enabled the personal computing and information technology revolutions. And Chinese government investments in research and development (R&D) have been rising dramatically each year:
"R. & D. expenditures have grown faster in China than in any other big country--climbing about twenty per cent each year for two decades, to seventy billion dollars last year. Investment in energy research under the 863 Program has grown far faster: between 1991 and 2005, the most recent year on record, the amount increased nearly fifty-fold."
A recent Nature article by Breakthrough Senior Fellow Christopher Green and co-author Isabel Galiana explains why a technology-led policy is the best way to achieve climate stabilization and transition to a future fueled by clean energy technology.
"The fixation on near-term targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions at the climate meeting in Copenhagen has resulted in insufficient attention towards the technological means of achieving them."
So begins "Let the Global Technology Race Begin," an article in Nature by Breakthrough Senior Fellow Christopher Green and co-author Isabel Galiana explaining the need for a technology-led approach to mitigating climate change instead of the emissions reductions target approach that is the hallmark of conventional climate policy.
The authors' focus on a technology builds on the findings of a 2008 Nature article entitled, "Dangerous Assumptions," co-authored by Green, Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke, Jr., and Tom Wigley. They found that the IPCC had significantly underestimated the emissions reductions necessary to achieve climate stabilization and thus, had seriously underestimated the scale of the technology challenge, concluding:
"enormous advances in energy technology will be needed to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide at levels that are currently considered acceptable... In the end, there is no question whether technological innovation is necessary -- it is. The question is, to what degree should policy focus explicitly on motivating such innovation?"
Here, Green and Galiana answer this question. Their analysis shows:
"cumulative emissions consistent with minimizing the rise in global temperature (climate stabilization) can be achieved by investing US$100 billion a year for the rest of the century in global energy R&D, testing, demonstration, and infrastructure."
The two experts offer three suggestions for how a technology-led approach to policy would work to catalyze the research, development, and deployment of a steady stream of clean energy technologies:
1) Instead of emissions targets, governments would agree to "credible long-term global commitments to invest in energy R&D," technology and infrastructure financed by "a low carbon price of $5 per tonne of emitted carbon dioxide, which would raise almost $150 billion per year globally and $30 billion in the United States alone."
2) The carbon price would "send a forward pricing signal to deploy new or improved low-carbon technologies" by rising gradually over time "doubling, say, every 10 years."
"These would span the technology spectrum: basic R&D in breakthrough technologies, 'enabling' R&D that allows scale-up of existing technologies (such as utility-scale storage for intermittent solar and wind energy); testing and demonstration projects; end energy-related infrastructure, such as 'smart grid' that help to manage intermittent energy sources."
3) Dedicated trust funds should be created to isolate R&D monies from "political interference." These funds would be overseen "by independent committees drawn from the public and private sectors." Countries that do not engage in R&D could use their portion of the funds "to purchase successfully developed technologies from those that do participate [in R&D]."
Galiana and Green explain how a technology-led policy "inverts the usual relationship between carbon pricing and technology, whereby carbon pricing is naively expected to induce fundamental technological innovation."
"Attaining the 2 degree goal in the United States with existing technology will likely be very expensive. Doing so in the developing world with existing expensive technology is likely to be impossible. ...
While an emissions price is an absolute requirement for an efficient regulatory framework, it is likely not the sole requirement. Due to some imperfections in any market economy, price signals may be dampened or be short circuited. This is particularly true in the market for research and development, where it is well known that firms have incentives to under-invest in research and development (R&D) due to the fact they cannot capture all the returns to R&D--some of those returns spill over to others in the market that did not invest as much. In this case, the emissions price cannot fully motivate the R&D market and therefore a well-designed regulatory program will contain a role for government funding of R&D. ...
In addition to the economic rational for government support of R&D, there is a political case to be made. Spurring R&D and demonstration and deployment of financially risky technology investments may require an emissions price that is not politically viable (that is, it is too high to be politically acceptable). In this case, absent the market imperfections above, the price is simply too low to generate the needed investments and government must step in to support the required levels of from R&D and demonstration and deployment."
-Ray Kopp, Senior Fellow at Resources for the Future, in testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Dec. 2, 2009.
Three U.S. Senators and a U.S. Congressman have unveiled new bi-partisan legislation intended to boost the international competitiveness of the United States' ailing solar technology manufacturing industry. The legislation is a commendable first step forward as components of a broader clean energy economy strategy. A full suite of long-term and targeted clean energy technology policies will be necessary for the United States to remain competitive in the global clean energy race.
Last month, U.S. Senators Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Michael Bennet (D-CO), and Robert Menendez (D-NJ), as well as Congressman Dave Camp (R-MI) introduced the Solar Manufacturing Jobs Creation Act, intended to boost the international competitiveness the U.S. solar manufacturing industry. After introducing the legislation, Senator Stabenow said it was necessary to "help us win the global race against China and other countries to produce solar technology in the clean energy economy."
The bi-partisan legislation would extend the existing solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC), which offers a 30 percent tax credit for solar energy investment and deployment, to cover the construction of new solar manufacturing facilities as well. The ITC was recently given an eight-year extension in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA) of 2008.
The new legislation would also give solar manufacturers access to the temporary cash grant program created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which has successfully boosted the deployment of renewable technologies, primarily wind power.
The new U.S. legislation is the second in as many months that aims to support the domestic solar industry. In late October, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Solar Technology Roadmap Act, which would require the U.S. Department of Energy to appoint a group of experts to create a long-term plan to guide solar energy R&D and the commercialization of next-generation solar technologies. While the bill only authorizes $2.25 billion for solar R&D over the next five years, it represents a sizable increase in funding and a move toward a more strategic and targeted approach to clean energy development.
If the U.S. is to regain its position as a global leader in clean energy technology, and solar in particular, much more targeted policy support is needed. Both the Solar Technology Roadmap Act and the Solar Manufacturing Jobs Creation Act are important first steps forward in developing a comprehensive clean energy economy strategy capable of revitalizing the U.S. economy and making the United States a world leader in clean energy technology once again.
Benchmarking clean-tech competitiveness: A new report by the Breakthrough Institute and Information Technology & Innovation Foundation provides the first comprehensive analysis of competitive positions among the U.S. and key Asian challengers in the global clean energy race.
The report examines the competitive position of each nation in core clean energy technologies, including solar, wind, and nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, advanced vehicles and batteries, and high-speed rail, as well as the government strategies each nation hopes will strengthen its position in the global clean technology sector. The report also offers recommendations for U.S. federal policymakers for regaining U.S. competitiveness.
I've also included the boost in FY2009 Department of Energy (DOE) R&D budgets provided by the economic stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. As Google's Dan Reicher warned the Senate on Wednesday: when these temporary stimulus funds dry up, the U.S. could fall of a "funding cliff" unless significantly larger allocations are made for clean energy R&D in Congressional legislation.
$15 billion. That is the figure at the heart of a growing consensus of energy innovation experts, all calling for dramatically larger U.S. investment in clean energy research and development. Writing at theEnergyCollective.com, Breakthrough's Jesse Jenkins highlights mounting calls to address what Google Director of Climate Change and Energy Dan Reicher called "a serious energy R&D short-fall" in the current House and Senate climate bills. As Congress debates energy and climate change legislation, a chorus of voices including policy think tanks such as the Brookings Institution, Third Way and the Breakthrough Institute, as well as a collection of both the nation's top research universities and dozens of Nobel-prize winning scientists have joined leading businesses like Google to converge on a $15 billion increase in annual U.S. energy R&D budgets as a critical component of any final legislation.
While biomedical research receives nearly $60 billion in private investment and $30 billion in public investment through the National Institutes of Health, investment in energy R&D leaves a huge innovation gap. Private sector spending is less than $3 billion annually with the government contributing just $5 billion per year more. A National Institutes of Energy and massive increase in federal clean energy spending is needed to fill the energy innovation gap and jumpstart a clean energy revolution.
Friday factoids time: The U.S. biomedical and pharmaceutical industry invests between 10-20 percent of revenues in R&D and new product development, spending $58.8b on R&D in 2007. The U.S. government adds an additional $30 billion per year investment in biomedical R&D through the National Institutes of Health.
In contrast, the U.S. energy sector invests well below $3 billion annually in R&D in an industry with well over a trillion dollars in annual revenue. The energy sector's R&D spending as a percent of revenues - call that figure the industry's innovation intensity - is just 0.23%. That compares to a national average innovation intensity across all industries of 2.6%, or ten-times greater than the energy-sector's innovation intensity. And it pale sin comparison with the innovation intensity of leading technology and innovation-intensive sectors including biomedical technology (10-20%), information technology (10-15%), and semiconductors (16%).
This downright paltry private-sector energy innovation spending leaves a massive energy innovation gap that the U.S. government barely begins to fill, investing only about $5 billion annually in energy R&D. That's barely more than half the levels spent on public research to pursue clean and affordable energy alternatives during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The scale and urgency of our national energy challenges have clearly grown since then, yet the national commitment to energy innovation has moved in the wrong direction. Public R&D spending on health care ($30b) and defense ($80b) signal the scale of true national innovation priorities and begs the question: when will the U.S. get serious about investments in clean energy innovation? When we do, a new National Institutes of Energy and a major increase in federal energy R&D investments are needed to fill the energy innovation gap and spur a clean energy revolution.
The House and Senate appropriations committee reached a final agreement on the FY2010 budget which offered no funding for President Obama's RE-ENERGYSE education program and a total of $66 million for just three out of eight proposed Energy Innovation Hubs
Yesterday, the tiny window of opportunity for President Obama's national energy education initiative, RE-ENERGYSE (Regaining our ENERGY Science and Engineering Edge), unceremoniously vanished, at least for FY2010, when House and Senate Conferees on the Energy and Water Appropriations bill completed the final conference agreement and provided no funding for RE-ENERGYSE.
This isn't a total surprise. RE-ENERGYSE - originally a $115 billion initiative designed to support the education of the next generation of scientists, engineers, and energy innovators - was allocated only $7.5 million by the House appropriations committee and then subsequently slashed by the Senate committee earlier this summer. Not surprising, maybe, but certainly disappointing and representative of a larger lack of support for American clean energy competitiveness at a time when energy and climate change is a top national policy priority and several Asian nations are aggressively positioning themselves to corner burgeoning clean energy technology markets.
After both the House and Senate appropriations were announced in July, the Breakthrough Institute's Jesse Jenkins and Teryn Norris penned an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle comparing the number of science, math, and engineering undergraduates in the U.S. to those in China.
"Only 15 percent of undergraduate degrees earned in the United States are in science and engineering, compared with 50 percent in China, according to the National Academies... If the United States had responded to the Soviet launch of Sputnik the way today's Congress is responding to the Asian energy challenge, America would have lost the space race and been left behind in the industries that fueled a half century of economic progress."
Perhaps even more disheartening, is that more than 100 universities, professionals, and youth groups - in other words those individuals most cognizant of the need for an education program focused on building American competitiveness - submitted a letter urging Congress to fully fund RE-ENERGYSE, which it appears was roundly ignored.
A growing consensus of experts, including the Breakthrough Institute and Third Way, advocate for a dramatic increase in federal investments in clean energy R&D and for new models of federal innovation in order to spur a prosperous clean energy economy and overcome the greatest challenge of our time
Today, the United States faces a nation-defining challenge and opportunity - getting America running on clean energy. In the past, the United States has confronted other significant obstacles by making a national commitment to invest the resources necessary to overcome it. In light of the clean energy, climate, and economic challenges we now face, the Breakthrough Institute and Third Way will release a report detailing why the U.S. must make just this sort of national commitment, once again, by scaling-up clean energy R&D on the order of $15 billion per year and creating a National Institutes of Energy to expand our clean energy innovation capacity and jumpstart a clean energy revolution.
This Thursday September 17, the Breakthrough Institute, Third Way, and U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) will be holding a forum on Capitol Hill to reveal, Jumpstarting a Clean Energy Revolution with a National Institutes of Energy, and to discuss how a focused innovation program will lead to a prosperous clean energy economy by making promising clean energy technologies a reality.
The Breakthrough Institute and Third Way report is the latest among a growing chorus of expert voices advocating the importance and urgency of both a dramatic increase in federal investments in clean energy R&D and the implementation of new models for federal innovation. The following is a selection of recent reports and recommendations, all part of the gathering consensus that the U.S. currently lacks both the structure and the financial commitment necessary to spur the dramatic clean energy innovation necessary to meet critical national economic, energy and climate objectives.
Clean energy technology hubs seem to be sprouting up all over the globe - except in the United States - and business leaders are pointing to massive public investment as the missing link preventing the U.S. from leading the clean energy race
Clean energy technology hubs are rapidly developing all over the world, except in the United States. Business leaders who met at the Reuters Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit acknowledged that massive government investment has created vibrant clean energy markets in countries around the world, but unfortunately the U.S. has not taken part in this trend. As The Business Insider reports, Google Green Energy Czar, Bill Weihl noted:
"Other countries, China being one of the major examples, are investing very heavily in this space across the whole innovation pipeline...from shower to power, from the idea in the shower to generating the power (in a) commercial scale enterprise."
Just yesterday, the China Greentech Initiative released a report describing how large-scale government investment is driving a clean energy market that could be worth upwards of US$1 trillion annually.
While China is home to some of the fastest growing clean energy centers, particular in the solar industry, Denmark, Japan, South Korea, India, North Africa, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi are all directly investing in creating domestic clean energy hubs.
A recent RAND Review offers the Tianjin Binhai New Area (TBNA) seven recommendations to help it become an economic powerhouse, including making solar energy cheap. But thanks to a stimulus that funds "indigenous innovation," China is already ahead of the game, particularly in the clean energy sector.
A recent RAND Review provides a slew of recommendations to help China expand the Tianjin Binhai New Area (TBNA) and turn it into a driver of economic progress. As a result of an enormous stimulus package (second only to that of the U.S.) with significant allocations for "indigenous innovation" in science and technology, China may already be well on its way to taking those suggestions to heart, particularly in the clean energy sector.
Tianjin Binhai New Area (TBNA), located in China's Bohai Rim region, has been a strong center for modern industry and manufacturing. But in 2006, the Chinese government mandated that TBNA become the next "regional engine for economic growth." To that end, the area has been the beneficiary of significant government support aimed at making the area the country's next "economic powerhouse" and orienting it towards leadership in providing solutions to national problems: among them, rising energy demand.
According to RAND:
"The goal of TBNA is to present an alternative to the traditional industrial economy, offering China a model of sustainable development and eco-friendly industry. Innovation in science and technology lies at the core of this vision of economic and environmental development."
In the report, RAND offers TBNA guidance in its endeavor to meet China's growing technology needs, both domestically and internationally, by recommending that it pursue seven emerging technologies including cheap solar energy and electric-hybrid vehicles.
On September 17, Breakthrough Institute, Third Way, and Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) will hold an event where they will discuss the findings of a new BTI/Third Way paper calling for an increase in investment in clean energy R&D and the creation of a new National Institutes of Energy in order to create a clean and prosperous energy economy.
The Breakthrough Institute and Third Way have prepared a new report detailing how the United States can jumpstart a clean energy revolution through investing in research and development and creating a National Institutes of Energy (akin to the NIH) to spur the development of innovative clean energy technologies.
Breakthrough Institute, Third Way, and U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) will be holding a forum detailing the findings of Third Way and the Breakthrough Institute's new paper and describing how a focused program of innovation will help make promising clean energy technologies a reality and create a clean and prosperous energy economy.
Please see the event details below. We hope you can join us for this exciting event!
Event:
A National Institutes of Energy: The Clean Energy Revolution Needs R&D
Date:
Thursday, September 17th
Time:
10:00 - 11:00 am
Coffee will be served
Location:
Dirksen Senate Office Building
SD-G-11
Washington, DC 20002
Please RSVP to rsvp@thirdway.org and indicate this event or reply to this email If you have any questions, please contact Jen Pengelly at 202-775-3768 ext. 214 or jpengelly@thirdway.org.
ABOUT THIRD WAY: Third Way is the leading think tank of the moderate wing of the progressive movement. We work with elected officials, candidates, and advocates to develop and advance the next generation of moderate policy ideas. For more information about Third Way please visit www.thirdway.org.
ABOUT THE BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE: The Breakthrough Institute is one of America's leading think tanks developing climate and energy policy solutions. Since 2002 Breakthrough has been a pioneering advocate of an innovation-centered approach to the nation's energy and climate challenges, calling for major federal investments to make clean and low-carbon energy technologies cheap and abundant, strengthen America's economic competitiveness and energy security, and slow global warming. For more information, please visit www.thebreakthrough.org
Wall Street and the wind industry are overjoyed by the uplifting impact of ARRA-backed cash grants, but the boom caused by this short-term stimulus program could be setting the wind sector up for yet another bust without a long-term deployment strategy focused on making clean energy cheap
That's what Ethan Zindler, head of New Energy Finance Ltd, proclaimed to the Wall Street Journal in response to emerging evidence that the government's $3 billion dollar cash grant renewable energy stimulus program is successfully incentivizing private investment in the wind sector.
After falling into the doldrums for the past six-months, the wind industry is roaring back to life thanks to direct public investments enacted in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), also known as the stimulus bill. A DOE and Treasury-funded cash grant incentive program is helping to grease the pipeline for private investors looking to finance renewable projects, particularly wind farms, slated to begin construction in 2009 or 2010. According to the WSJ, just four weeks into the program $800 million in grants have already been submitted and Wall Street bankers predict that figure to reach $10 billion by the end of 2010.
The cash grant program was created to rescue the clean energy industry, a critical American growth sector, from the malaise of the credit crisis. The tax credits (PTC and ITC) that usually incite clean energy development are worthless in an economic climate where the big financial firms that typically absorb them, on behalf of project developers, are in crisis.
The solution: Congress tucked a two-year cash grant into ARRA worth 30% of qualifying wind, solar, and geothermal project costs, replacing the normal production and investment tax credits. With the money from the program officially flowing since August, the grants are breathing new vigor into clean energy investment, speeding America's economic recovery.
With big players like Morgan Stanley and Citigroup investing $120 million each to finance new wind farms, the wind sector is generating more than clean energy - it's producing clear evidence that public investment really does drive private investment. By covering 30% of a new project's cost, the cash grant program will spur more than two dollars in private investment for every public dollar, successfully leveraging taxpayer money to drive significant private investment in cleaner energy, greater energy security, and accelerated economic recovery.
The projected success of the cash grants, which bankers calculate will lead to 9-15% annual returns per deal, suggests that perhaps, public investment is even more effective at driving private investment than setting an economy-wide carbon price, an oft-suggested strategy to motivate private financing in renewable RD&D.
A recent report, released by geo-engineering experts at the UK's Institution of Mechanical Engineering, highlights the viability of geo-engineered technologies, such as algae coated buildings, as a stop-gap solution for rising carbon emissions and imminent climate change
No - this is not an obscure Ghostbusters reference. According to the Financial Times, geo-engineering experts at the UK-based Institution of Mechanical Engineering (IME) have deemed "slime-covered buildings", along with artificial trees and reflective buildings, viable options for removing carbon from the atmosphere.
Although "slime" is a slightly hyperbolic reference to strips of carbon-consuming algae, a recent report by IME says the substance can be installed via bio-reactors on building walls to absorb carbon from the air. Before it decomposes (and really gets slimy) the algae is collected and either decarbonized or reprocessed as fuel. While "slime" carbon capture is still in the planning stages, it is an extremely attractive geo-engineering option because its waste could be used as a biofuel and it would require no additional land to deploy.
The report, entitled "Geo-engineering: Giving us Time to Act," is intended to advance acceptance of geo-engineering as a potential climate change mitigator and proposes a 75-100 year roadmap for countering climate that includes geo-engineering as part, not all, of the solution. According to the IME:
Geo-engineering is not an encompassing solution to global warming. It is however, another potential component in our approach to climate change that could prove the world with extra time to decarbonise the global economy, a task which has yet to begin in earnest.
Much of the resistance to geo-engineering innovations - such as faux-trees that capture carbon more effectively than the real thing - is based on the fear that these technologies will replace clean energy technology as the preferred solution to reducing carbon intensity. The report emphasizes, however, that geo-engineering is not the so-called silver bullet solution, it's a stop-gap measure that will help manage the world's carbon overstock while clean energy is being developed and deployed.
In a continued look at the role of nationalism in the clean energy race, Mother Jones' Kevin Drum applauds the rhetoric behind the clean energy race narrative but raises concerns about over-zealous nationalism and xenophobia towards Asia
A second piece on nationalism in the context of the clean energy race was published on Mother Jones' blog MoJo, and is evidence that the growing body of discourse around this issue has struck a very resonant chord. In the post, entitled "Harnessing Nationalism," Kevin Drum offers poignant, if somewhat veiled, criticism of the rhetoric behind the "clean energy race" narrative.
Inspired by The New Republic's Bradford Plumer, the post starts with a lengthy quote whose primary point is this: the clean energy race is not a zero-sum competition because everyone stands to benefit if China makes a significant effort to reduce emissions by investing in clean technology.
First, as Drum puts it, Plumer's commentary may be an attempt at "intellectual honesty," but honesty doesn't make it completely accurate. True, the whole world will benefit from advancements in clean energy no matter where it comes from, but China is not motivated to compete in the clean tech industry by emissions reductions - it is driven by the potential for economic gain.
As a (rapidly) developing nation, economic development, not emissions targets, is the highest priority. Thus, the race is not about emissions, it is about whose economy stands to benefit from leadership in clean technology.
Drum views the clean energy race through "green" tinted glasses, as well, preferring the "race" rhetoric to the alternative: the apocalyptic narrative that has clearly failed to motivate effective climate change action. Rhetorically speaking, framing the need to reduce carbon emissions as a clean energy race is both more engaging and more productive. As he aptly declares:
If this kind of thing got us to the moon, maybe it can save the planet as well. I say we go along.
The clean energy race, however, is more than just a new and improved framing mechanism or encouragement of America's honed nationalistic tendencies - it is an economic truth. What Drum misses when he writes off the recent proliferation of clean energy articles as hype, is that this issue could both be an effective rhetorical tool as well as a humbling reality.
Clean Skies TV profiles Breakthrough Senior Fellow and Professor Emeritus of Physics at NYU, Martin Hoffert, a proponent of space-based solar energy generation
The ARPA-E initiative is a project of the Department of Energy, its purpose is to fund "high-risk, high-payoff transformational R&D ... that can enhance the economic and energy security of the United States through reductions of imports of energy from foreign sources, etc." (more here)
Funded with money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, one would think that ARPA-E, being a semantic cousin of the Pentagon's well-known DARPA division, famous for its assisted walking suits, robotic espionage dragonflys and, of course, the internet, would have a slew of strange projects on their roster. However, one scientist, whose rejected space based solar program requested a modest $2 million dollars for further testing, feels the DOE's selection process was a bit lopsided.
Senior Breakthrough Fellow and Professor Emeritus of Physics at NYU, Martin Hoffert, has long made the case for space-based solar power as an alternative to earth-moored models. Up beyond the filters of pollution and the limits of daylight, the sun's energy is nearly constant and undiffused. Using solar panels affixed to a satellite or, say, the International Space Station, the idea would be to beam the energy back to terrestrial sources in the form of microwaves or some other heretofore undiscovered method.
Hoffert even has the PR effort down pat, as he explains in a segment for Clean Skies TV: "We've spent a fortune on the International Space Station, and people are still saying, 'What have we got from it?' Well, we could probably beam power from the International Space Station to various locations along its ground track, including some in developing countries that have no prospect of getting energy."
Now that certainly sounds "transformational"; and for $2 million dollars it's a no-brainer, right? But out of the 3500 applications the ARPA-E program received, only 40 - 60 (roughly 1.1%) will receive funding of between $3 to $5 million dollars. While Hoffert's program got the snub, in the approved pile is a project that aims to capture the heat trapped in asphalt parking lots and other paved surfaces via a series of tubes filled with water.
On his Dot Earth blog, NY Times science reporter, Andy Revkin, asks the $2 million dollar question: "Which project strikes you as more 'transformational'?"
In a recent speech at Harvard, energy secretary Steven Chu again supported an agenda to make the US a leading clean energy innovator. But Congress continues to reject strategic policies that would make this a reality.
In a speech yesterday at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, energy secretary Steven Chu again repeated his declaration that nothing less than a technological "revolution" is necessary to meet America's energy challenge and to ensure the US position as a leading global economic power.
Speaking alongside Congressman Ed Markey, Chu told his audience that future US prosperity depends upon widely deploying renewable energy, developing carbon capture and storage capabilities, and increasing energy efficiency--but most importantly, it depends upon becoming a leading innovator in clean energy technologies.
Chu minced no words when he described this critical juncture for the US in the
global clean energy industry:
"We're faced with the following choices: We can become the leader of a new industrial revolution and lay the foundation of our future economic prosperity ... or we can hope the price of oil will go back to $30 a barrel, deny climate change is happening and let other countries take the lead in energy innovation."
Today, the U.S. Department of Energy announced $377 million in funding to establish 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) pursuing potentially path-breaking basic and translational research at the cutting-edge of clean energy innovation. Of this funding, $277 comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, otherwise known as the stimulus package) and $100 million comes from the DOE's FY2009 budget. The funding will be sustained over the next five years, with the DOE committing $100 million of its budget to the research centers each year.
"Meeting the challenge to reduce our dependence on imported oil and curtail greenhouse gas emissions will require significant scientific advances," said Energy Secretary Steven Chu as he announced the new funding for EFRCs. "These centers will mobilize the enormous talents and skills of our nation's scientific workforce in pursuit of the breakthroughs that are essential to expand the use of clean and renewable energy."
The majority of EFRCs are based in universities, with several harnessing the skills and resources of the national laboratories, and just three awarded to non-profit organizations and private corporations. Over the course of the program, these centers will employ over 1,800 people in research into four primary realms: Renewable and Carbon-Neutral Energy (including Solar Energy Utilization, Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems, Biofuels, and Geological Sequestration of CO2); Energy Efficiency (Clean and Efficient Combustion, Solid State Lighting, Superconductivity); Energy Storage (Hydrogen Research, Electrical Energy Storage); and Crosscutting Science (Catalysis, Materials under Extreme Environments).
Two new studies published last month -- one by the Office of Tony Blair and the Climate Group, the other by the Global Climate Network and Center for American Progress (CAP) -- strongly advocate a climate policy strategy based on direct government investment in energy technology development and deployment.
The studies independently reach conclusions similar to the Breakthrough Institute's and are yet another indication of "The Emerging Climate Consensus," which recognizes the limits of carbon pricing and advocates major increases in federal funding to deploy low-carbon energy technologies and drive down their costs through direct public investment in RD&D (research, development, and demonstration), deployment, and supporting infrastructure.
"Governments should adopt a strategic top-down approach to ensure that critical technologies arrive on time and provide investment in disruptive options to allow radical transformation in the future... The reality is that carbon pricing does not address many other market failures along the innovation chain."
The study argues that direct public support is crucial to develop and deploy new technologies: "Market failures along the innovation chain require public spending to drive technologies down their cost curve to a point where the carbon price can take over and accelerate their deployment." Echoing the Breakthrough Institute, International Energy Agency, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu (and defying critics like Joseph Romm), the report once again concludes that energy technologies must undergo major developments to meet emission reduction targets:
"Although we have the technologies we need through to 2020, new technologies -- many available but not yet commercially proven -- will be needed to meet the more challenging long-term goals. Therefore, at the same time as we deploy existing solutions, we must invest in future options."
Despite President Obama's call for an energy revolution, it is up to Congress to provide funding. The Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-e) made a recent call for research proposals into "high-risk, high-payoff transformational energy-related R&D," for projects that "(1) translate scientific discoveries and cutting-edge inventions into technological innovations and (2) accelerate transformational technological advances in areas that industry by itself is not likely to undertake because of high technical or financial risk."
Over 3,500 research teams submitted proposals for a slice of the available $150 million. As a result, over 98% of applicants we "discouraged" from submitting a full application.
Sure, some of the applications were "undoubtedly unrealistic, fundamentally flawed, written in crayon, or the like," as Andrew Revkin aptly noted at Dot Earth. But with 98% of all proposals rejected, there's got to be another explanation for the high rejection rate as well. Surely at least 5%, 10%, maybe even one third of these proposals are worth further consideration. Remember: this round of project proposals was simply to get into the next round of consideration where ARPA-e program managers would being the real project grant selection process. No, the reason so many proposals were rejected has more to do with the fact that there is simply not nearly enough money to fund all the good, potentially game-changing clean energy ideas out there.
This problem is not unique to this ARPA-e or this round of research proposals. It is a chronic symptom of this country's (under)commitment to clean energy.
Policymakers should employ a portfolio of policies that "supports a broad range of initiatives from basic research through demonstration" of clean energy technologies, the National Academies' Committee on America's Energy Future recommends.
The United States needs a new "sustained national commitment" to improving energy efficiency and accelerating both the development and deployment of clean energy technologies, according to a major new report from the National Academies Press (NAP).
Authored by the National Academies' Committee on America's Energy Future, the recently released paper is the first part in a longer report, titled America's Energy Future: Technology and Transformation. The result of a major study initiated in 2007, the report is designed to inform policymakers about the state of development, costs, implementation barriers, and impacts of current energy technology and potential options for the future and presents eight key findings (summarized below).
Policymakers should employ a portfolio of policies that "supports a broad range of initiatives from basic research through demonstration," the Committee recommends, adding the typical cautionary note, that policymakers should strive to avoid "select[ing] technology winners and losers,"
America's Energy Future explains that the scope and scale of the U.S. energy challenge requires that the U.S. take advantage of available energy efficiency improvements, deploy emerging clean energy technologies, and fund long-term investments in research and development of new technologies. No single component of that strategy is sufficient. According to the report:
"'Business as usual' approaches for obtaining and using energy will be inadequate for achieving the needed transformation. The efforts required will involve not only substantial new investments by the public and private sector in research, development, demonstration, and deployment--in virtually all aspects of the energy infrastructure--but also new public policies and regulations on energy production, distribution, and use."
The authors also acknowledge that the "the U.S. energy system has developed in response to an array of uncoordinated market forces and shifting public policies," the result of the fact that the United States has never before advanced a comprehensive set of national energy policies. The report calls for a concerted, coordinated and sustained suite of federal policies and investments to advance clean energy technologies and transform the U.S. energy sector, such as the Breakthrough Institute's proposal to make clean energy cheap and abundant.
Yesterday the U.S. Senate passed the Energy and Water Appropriations Bill (H.R. 3183) appropriating $34.3 billion in energy spending for FY2010. The bill supports Barack Obama's campaign promise to shut down Nevada's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility and funds numerous water initiatives set-forth by the Army Corps of Engineers.
Notably absent, however, is any funding for RE-ENERGYSE (REgaining our ENERGY Science and Engineering Edge), Obama's proposed initiative to close the energy education gap by preparing young Americans to compete in the race for clean energy. From Obama's initial proposal of $115 million, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees rejected the program by cutting funding to $7 million and $0, respectively. The bill that passed through the Senate, by an 85-9 vote, contained no mention of the forward-thinking and much-needed education program.
Breakthrough Institute believes the clean energy race demands a vigorous federal investment of at least $30-50 billion per year in clean energy. In contrast, Romm ardently supports weaker legislation that would invest just $10 billion per year, less than one quarter of China's planned investments. That may be acceptable to Joe Romm -- but it is no way to win the clean energy race.
Romm asserted that our op-ed "attacks" President Obama and Democratic leaders, when in fact it calls on Congress to support Obama's RE-ENERGYSE energy education program
and urges greater public investment in clean energy to compete with
Asian challengers. Yet Romm never mentioned the central focus of the
op-ed -- RE-ENERGYSE and our efforts to rally support behind it,
including a recent sign-on letter with over 100 organizations
-- and instead criticized us for what he called "willfully misleading
nonsense" about Asian countries' planned investments in clean energy.
Romm also criticized us for asserting that Congress must strengthen
the Waxman-Markey bill with greater investments in clean energy to
compete with Asian challengers and accelerate our transition to a clean
energy economy. Why? Because Romm apparently believes the Waxman-Markey
proposal -- which would invest only $10 billion per year in clean
energy and energy efficiency, less than 0.1% of U.S GDP -- is sufficient to win the clean energy
race. It is not.
"Waxman-Markey would complete America's transition to a clean energy economy, which started with the stimulus bill," reads the title of a prominently featured post
on Romm's website, a claim he has repeated multiple times.
"Waxman-Markey would generate more clean energy action than any piece
of legislation passed by any country in the history of the world!" exclaimed Romm in another recent post as part of his consistent and ongoing cheer-leading for the legislation.
Today, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) expressed "strong opposition" to the Senate's attempt to cut funding for two key Obama administration energy initiatives, which received no support in the recent committee markup of Energy and Water Appropriations bill. The bill significantly scales back support for the administration's Energy Innovation Hubs, and its completely zeroes $115 million in funding requested for President Obama's new energy education initiative, RE-ENERGYSE.
OMB raised concerns about certain provisions, saying it strongly
opposes reductions in funding for Energy Innovation Hubs, and the
science and engineering education outreach campaign RE-ENERGYSE
program, among other concerns.
"The Hubs will advance highly promising areas of energy science and
technology from their early states and RE-ENERGYSE will help develop
the science and engineering workforce needed to bring those ideas to
life by encouraging tens of thousands of American students to pursue
careers in science, engineering, and entrepreneurship related to clean
energy," OMB said.
The Breakthrough Institute recently organized a letter signed by over 100 institutions and universities urging Congress to fully fund the Re-ENERGYSE program, which they said "will train America's future energy workforce, accelerate our transition to a prosperous clean-energy economy, and ensure that we lead the world's burgeoning clean technology industries."
Yesterday, Breakthrough's Jesse Jenkins and Teryn Norris penned an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle warning that without a vigorous commitment to education and innovation in order to bridge the energy education gap, we will effectively cede the clean-energy race to our Asian competitors.
The full Senate took up the $34.3 billion Energy and Water Appropriations bill yesterday, and plans to clear it by the end of the week.
With China, South Korea and Japan all moving aggressively to corner the burgeoning global clean energy market, Asian competitors may dominate the clean energy sector if Congress doesn't act now to strengthen the Waxman-Markey bill with much larger investments in our own clean energy economy and fully support President Obama's energy education initiative, Norris and Jenkins argue.
Monday's op-ed comes one year after Breakthrough proposed a similar National Energy Education Act, calling for an effort on par with the original National Defense Education Act of 1958, which invested billions each year to train and empower the young generation that won the space race and invented the technologies that catapulted the U.S. and the world into the Information Age.
Breakthrough Institute is planning to release a full report on the USA-Asia clean energy race within the next few weeks, so stay tuned.
As President Obama put it in his Congressional address in February:
"We know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21st century. And yet it is China that has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy efficient... New plug-in hybrids roll off our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea. Well I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders -- and I know you don't either. It is time for America to lead again."
President Obama is right. However, as Norris and Jenkins warn in today's op ed:
"If America does not take immediate action to bridge its energy education gap - and if we fail to make substantially larger investments in our own clean-energy economy - we will effectively cede the clean-energy race to Asia. A decade from now, we may still find the burgeoning clean-energy economy promised by Obama and Democratic leaders. It will simply be headquartered in China."
You can read the extended version of the op ed below...
